Being in Ukraine

David & Shelly Hayes

~by Bob Gustin

The walls and shelves of David and Shelly Hayes’ home in Nashville are sprinkled with art and artifacts from Ukraine. Brightly patterned pysanka, also known as Ukrainian Easter eggs, traditional nesting dolls, landscape and cityscape paintings, and more.

The cultural artifacts are reminders of a land and people now bearing the scars of a brutal Russian invasion. But David and Shelly know first-hand the resilience and determination of the Ukrainians.

He was pastor of the Parkview Church of the Nazarene just outside Nashville from 1986 to 1992 and again from 2005 to 2014. But he spent two full years working in Ukraine, 1992–1994. He made periodic visits back, staying for months at a time in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, living in Kyiv and travelling to Russia, the Republic of Georgia, Belarus, and throughout Ukraine.

After his last Parkview assignment, David spent the next five years in consulting, training, and coaching roles for the church, and is now hospice chaplain for SouthernCare Hospice in Bloomington, while continuing online mentoring and training of church leaders across eastern Europe and Asia.

An Indiana native, David earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois. After graduation, he was a youth pastor in Anderson, Indiana, then an admissions counselor for the university.

It was his work as an admissions counselor, and the travel and speaking it required, that gave him a taste of the ministry.

But he was drawn to mission work.

“I can’t describe it to you,” he said, “but I can still feel the angst. For three years, I told them I wanted to go behind the Iron Curtain.”

Shelly was born and raised in Valparaiso, Indiana, but her parents had a second home in Brown County. She met David when both were students at Olivet Nazarene University, and they were married in 1979.

She has a degree in business administration and marketing, previously working as marketing director for Gaither Family Resources in

Alexandria, Indiana, and in graphics design and marketing at the international Wesleyan church headquarters in Fishers, Indiana.

She started the Clay Purl yarn store in Nashville in 2011.

The Hayes’ opportunity for mission work arose when the Soviet Union broke apart, and the church got word of a businessman passing out Bibles in Kyiv, which turned into a makeshift church with 100 people meeting at a school. David was sent to Ukraine in 1992 as a pastor and compassion director.

David and his family lived and worked in Ukraine for two years, during the chaotic years just after the breakup of the Soviet Union, a time and place sometimes known as the “wild, wild east.”

A typical factory worker in Ukraine made the equivalent of $8 a month at the time David and Shelly did mission work there. Life was rugged and the streets were dirty. Lightbulbs were routinely stolen from hallways and even elevator panels.

“We were robbed five times the first seven months we were there,” he said. Practicing in front of a mirror, he learned not to smile at others on the streets, to avoid becoming a target. But he noted that much has changed for the better since those early days of Ukrainian independence.

“Living in Ukraine in the early 1990s can be easily described with the Charles Dickens line—’It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’” Shelly said. “We walked into a beautiful, yet very run-down city, nothing was familiar to us, everything seemed backwards to our way of thinking, food was scarce, the currency was in free-fall, and everything was fearful and chaotic.

“Yet, we met beautiful, proud, hospitable, well-educated people who loved their country, who loved their city, who loved being ‘Ukrainian,’ and who were beginning to taste freedom from centuries of oppression,” she said.

“You would go into homes and get to know people” David said. “There was a depth in that culture that you loved.

“They had so little, but they had deep love,” he said.

He left the mission over concerns for the health of his family and the hardships of life in general. After that, he served as pastor in Chandler, Arizona, as well as Alexandria and Westfield in Indiana before returning to Parkview. But he continued to make visits to eastern Europe and never lost contact with some of the people he met there.

“We left Ukraine in 1994 and didn’t return until 2010. What we saw was nothing short of amazing. The city was truly beautiful, people held their heads high, we could see that the business climate had greatly changed. We were so excited to reconnect with our friends,” Shelly said.

“Then we were able to spend extended time in Ukraine between 2016 and 2019. I believe the biggest observation I had during this time was that things had continued to move forward. We sensed the freedoms that they treasure, we saw the national pride increased (this was post Revolution of Dignity, 2014), we witnessed a free election when President Zelensky was elected, and we also saw the evidence of the continuing war taking place in the east.”

Shelly and David living in Ukraine, 1992.

David and Shelly have two children, daughter Alyssa Stanley, who teaches at Brown County Middle School; and Paul, who is an administrative and outreach professional at Brown County Visitor’s Bureau and the chamber of commerce.

The ongoing war between Russian and Ukraine began in 2014 and included the Russian annexation of Crimea. Russia launched a new full-scale invasion on February 24, a campaign which has resulted in thousands of civilian casualties, widespread destruction, with reports of human rights violations and wartime atrocities.

Accurate statistics are hard to get. During the first six weeks of the war, the Associated Press reported 4.5 million Ukrainians became refugees from the fighting, and the total continues to grow. Estimates of civilian deaths in the war ranged from 2,000 to more than 23,000, depending on the source. The economy was shattered, buildings and infrastructure stood in ruin.

“If Russia levels every building and kills everybody in their way, the people of Ukraine will still fight. They won’t quit. Their resilience comes from a love of freedom,” David said.

He said there are many ways Americans can help Ukraine in its struggle against Russia. Among his favorites are the Nazarene Compassionate Ministries and Come Back Alive. He also urges people to write to their senators and representatives in Congress, and to President Biden, urging them to support aid to Ukraine.

Shelly’s Clay Purl yarn shop is accepting donations to help victims of the war, and 100 percent of the money donated will go directly to Ukrainian relief through the Nazarene Compassionate Ministries charity.

“Ukraine has never been ‘Russia,’ they have their own beautiful and rich history,” Shelly said. “They have been oppressed, and murdered senselessly under the czars, under the Soviets, and now by the Russians. They will not give up their homeland. We are seeing their grit, their fortitude, and their love of their land, their freedom, and their democracy. They are a proud people—as they should be. They will not quit, and they deserve our support so that they may continue to live free.”